Eponymous Coward’s Techdirt Comments

The solution

I believe we now have a worthwhile use for the NSA's Utah data center. They can repurpose the facility to store all the info that our government should be saving, rather than all our info that they should be leaving the hell alone.

Judging from the track record, government officials can confidently hand over ALL emails, secure in the knowledge that nothing illegal will ever be uncovered once it's sent to Utah.

Re: What abuses, specifically?

Abuses like collection of data from US citizens without warrants, violating our Fourth Amendment rights. Thousands of these per year. Abuses like this same data being passed along to numerous government agencies with instructions to 'launder' it so that it's harder to trace the info back to the NSA.

As to controls, you'll need to do a bit of your own catch-up reading to see how little oversight, much less follow up on abuses, has existed.

TL;DR... Big stinking piles of abuses, with nothing but shitty damage control from the government.

Re:

It can mean the difference between murder and manslaughter, or between murder and aggravated murder, but in any case the direct actions of LEOs appears to have caused the death of a citizen.

With pepper spray and tasers readily available, I see this as a complete and utter failure to use the appropriate response to a noncompliant subject. Hell, with 9 of them, they could have just dog-piled onto the guy and subdued him with their sheer weight while someone got cuffs on him. Close enough to strike with a blunt object is close enough to use multiple other tactics to subdue, especially when fully equipped officers are dealing with an unarmed person.

Re: Re: Re: To any Frustrated Aussies

Wow, so that law means that EA can't kill the servers in a few years without a barrage of refund requests?

If it were me, I'd demand the repair option. Sorry EA, but screw you and turn the servers back on. You broke it, now fix it. Maybe that sort of forced commitment to legacy support would actually get them to rethink this always connected nonsense.

Re: Re: Re: Re: But, of course

I'm closer to your opinion that ZP's, but you don't need to go so far as to say "arm them". In my opinion, what's needed is a solid, workable CCW law without the pitfall of gun-free zones.

Similar to your argument, the only people who will bring a gun into a gun-free zone are those intent on breaking the law. They go in, then, confident that they won't have to deal with armed defense. If you remove that false 'haven' label from schools/churches/etc, then suddenly an unstable gunman won't have any obvious signs telling them where there aren't any guard dogs amongst the sheep. The prospect looks less appealing, and that in and of itself could (I have no idea if it would) have a chilling effect on this shit.

I'm not a huge fan of high-capacity magazines, myself. I'm a firm believer in retaining my right to own guns, but I'd personally be ok if 30-round magazines went away. Of course, they can't just go away now...

Re: Re:

Umm, there's a huge difference between "anyone can hear the best singers throughout the world" and "anyone can see, in person, a live performance by the best singers in the world".

As someone who is also pretty good at singing, I can attest that globalization has had zero net-effect on my ability to make a solid part-time job out of local gigs. I've never heard any of my musician friends bemoaning the sharp decline in performance opportunities due to the wider online availability of music, and I personally think it's a boon to the local artist, as sub-genres and musical niches have become more recognized as people branch out through freely available music.

People at shows around here know and appreciate rockabilly and newgrass much more than they did ten years ago, mainly because they can listen to and learn about them via free, widely available content.

Movie studios are just flat-pissed that they no longer have the only key to the content distribution door, or that those dirty, dirty pirates have gone and installed a side door or two without their blessing.

Nothing to see here

Honestly, guys, that's why we don't want anyone to see it. The suppressed photo and video evidence absolutely don't show either A)physical mistreatment of Dotcom or B)peeps who could easily be identified as agents of the US Government.

We just want to save you all the time and effort of going through the evidence only to find out that everything was 100% on the up and up.

Big Brass Ones

Serious stones on the creator here. It's one thing to bury a pseudonym signature in the code, quite another to enable real-time taunting of the infected.

This level of communication/access could potentially allow the creator to modify his trojan in real-time. Imagine a face-off between black and white hats, furiously coding to outwit the other. It's like all the shitty "OMG, hackers!" scenes in tv shows, only for real.

Re:

Think of big content!

The push for less bloody, 'cyber wars' will do untold damage to Hollywood content creators. Stalwart entries such as "The Longest Day", "Tora Tora Tora!", "Platoon", "Blackhawk Down", and "The Hurt Locker" would not have been possible in a world where the weapons of choice are constituted of bits instead of bullets. Imagine a summer movie lineup composed of "Hackers 3", "The Net 4", and "War Games: Rerevengerance". Paltry fare, this.

Now imagine the damage done to the content companies when the ignorant public learns how to conduct sophisticated cyber-war from watching these instructional videos. Want to hack twice as fast? Have two people use the same keyboard at the same time (sorry NCIS). High-level tech gibberish will enable even more efficient stealing of Hollywood's ideas, pushing neural net technology to the point that ultra-1337 haxxorz will download unfinished films directly from the brain of Michael Bay.

For the sake of the children, we must ensure that peace is kept in the bloodiest and lowest-tech way possible. Patent holders on tanks and planes should refuse to license their products, and escalate this lockdown until, once again, the man who weilds a board with rusty nails sticking out of it is king.

The jailer's waiting

With WB still aggressively defending a 70+ year old movie, and Disney (Mickey Mouse, the eternal copyright) thinking about doing their own version, it shouldn't be long before no one's allowed to even type the words Witch, Wizard, Scarecrow, Tin Man, etc, without a DMCA notice slapping them in the nethers.

Screw public domain so long as a major studio can repackage and re-copyright. That's what I call progress!